HIV Rates for U.S. Urban Black Women Five Times Higher than Previously Estimated
From the news release:
The data come from an ongoing, larger series of studies supported by the HIV Prevention Trials Network, and reflect testing and analysis of at-risk women in six urban areas in the northeastern and southeastern United States hardest hit by the global AIDS epidemic. The so-called “hotspots” are Baltimore; Atlanta; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Washington, D.C.; Newark, N.J.; and New York City. Researchers plan to present their findings March 8 at the 19th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle.
Specifically, the team found that among 2,099 women ages 18 to 44, 88 percent of whom were black, 1.5 percent (32 women) tested positive at the outset of the study, even though they all thought they were negative. Among those who initially tested negative for HIV, the rate of new infections was 0.24 percent within a year after joining the study. Some 215 study participants came from Baltimore.
Experts say this rate of infection, or seroconversion, is five times previous estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overall for African-American women.
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